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At the Crossroads in 2016

Posted on August 2, 2016 by Bill Leave a comment

This is a guest post by my wife, Carol Leavenworth.

At the Crossroads in 2016

By Carol Leavenworth, LPC

Most of the time I try to ignore politics. But this year the presidential campaign has become so bizarre that I’ve been watching with a kind of morbid fascination. How did we get here? How could a man like Donald Trump possibly have become a serious candidate for President of our country?

As a Jungian therapist, I have to ask myself how I and other politically liberal people may have unconsciously contributed to Trump’s success. Observing the contrast that emerged from last month’s political conventions between the Democrats’ positive vision for the future and Republicans’ negative and pessimistic view, I think I have begun to understand why these two wildly disparate standpoints appeal to such vast numbers of Americans.

Garden of Eden

As a psychotherapist I know that the loss of the fundamental safety and comfort that we enjoyed while we were held in our mothers’ wombs is a universal human experience. At birth we are thrust into a world of uncertainty and fear where our needs will never again be met instantaneously and our very survival is not necessarily assured. And life continues to become ever more precarious from there. The story of the expulsion from the Garden of Eden reflects this experience.

Life outside The Garden is filled with danger and risk. Growth is impossible unless we embrace this reality. We must leave our mother’s side and venture out into the world – to school, to work, to new homes that we create for ourselves. That most of us do this pretty well doesn’t mean we are always comfortable with our lives or that we necessary feel all that safe.

But we want to be. A primary motive driving us throughout adulthood is to find the lost wholeness, safety and comfort that some small part of each of us vaguely remembers from the far distant past.

In tough scary times like these, this drive is even stronger. To allay our fears and satisfy deep needs to feel safe and whole we are inevitably drawn to leaders who encourage us to lay down our burdens and give over our struggle to a strong parent figure who will make it better for us. This is a profoundly human impulse, and today Donald Trump is the man who is appealing to that impulse.

Well good, you might say. Why not let him do it? The difficulty here is that it won’t work. We can’t resolve life’s important challenges by giving in to shadowy fears and returning to old dependencies. Going back will not help. In fact whenever we act on these regressive impulses, we risk ending up worse off than before. Think back on your own life. Most if not all of us can find instances in our own personal histories when we’ve chosen what we thought was the safe road only to find ourselves with more problems than ever.

But if we can’t go back, what will work?

It was First Lady Michelle Obama speaking at the Democratic Convention who reminded me of the viable and healing way through dark times. Her remarks swept away the negative and pessimistic mindset that I had fallen into as I watched the nightly news reports throughout the winter and spring. Hearing her, I recalled to myself the truths that I try to impart to others in my work as a psychotherapist. It is the choices we make from our best selves that are the ones that enable us to move forward in resolving life problems, big and small. Even more importantly these are the choices that build the inner capacities and strengths that will ultimately bring each of us to a new experience of the abiding wholeness and safety that can arise only from within. We heal ourselves and the world in the process of creating, developing and expressing our best selves.

Crossroads

The enormous divide that we see between the two major candidates for President tells us that we have arrived at a great crossroads. Eight years ago we made a courageous decision to elect the first African American man to the Presidency. He pulled us back from the brink of worldwide economic ruin and brought us here to the time when we are asked to make the even more courageous decision to elect a smart, politically savvy, seasoned and progressive woman to be our President.

Hillary Clinton points us to a future where we face the challenges that confront us head on rather than building walls and hiding behind them. She invites us all to work together to secure our futures. She affirms that none of the tasks before us can be solved by one person or one group. She does not promise to take care of us. She promises to lead us. And she asks us to dig deep once again and act from our best selves.

When we do, we help the world and we help ourselves. Acting on our best selves out in the world feeds our souls and contributes to the long and difficult task of rebuilding the inner wholeness that is the true goal of our searching hearts.

Posted in Fear, Jungian Therapy, Politics, Stories, Terrorism, Trump

Changes

Posted on July 30, 2016 by Bill Leave a comment

I retired five years ago. I waited until I was 68 to pile up some more retirement benefits. I also waited because I was scared of retiring. When I retired I took two part time jobs which soon went to one. I felt like I had to work. That lasted four years. Now, I am truly retired. (Funny thing, I wrote tired instead of retired.).

Another reason I retired from my career in water treatment was noticing I just was not as sharp as I used to be. I have always been fairly sharp, except for the ADD brain lapses I have always lived with. The lapses were more frequent. One of my part time jobs required constant focus. Not good. The other one was working with elementary school kids, and meant unremitting joy. I gave that job up because I didn’t want to work so many hours, and my bad back was complaining.

Now my back still complains, but I can pace myself more and take a time out if I need to. Right now it’s my upper back hurting after yoga and shoveling a pickup load of wood chips. Today I am going for a walk where it is flat.

About those lapses. All older people complain about them. The other day I made four trips to the basement to get something and never did come up with it. Yesterday I was in the grocery store and upset because I forgot the list. When I got home without some things on the list I found it in my pocket.

Well, there is a reason for this. As we age, our brains tend to shift from the executive function-running things- to inner processes. It is certainly true for me. I want to write, read, meditate, and enjoy happy entertainment. There is a huge obstacle right now. Politics.

Prayer

It’s hard to hold on to my equanimity these days. Usually I deal with negativity by praying for the people creating the mood. I have even prayed for Newt Gingrich. I have yet to be able to pray for His Yellowness. Praying for people doesn’t necessarily change them, although sometimes it does, but it does change me. The changes I experience make me more able to live with myself. I am even less of a jackass on the road.

I have more peace. My body doesn’t work as well as it used to, but I think my mind may be getting to a place where I can actually experience the inner connectedness of all life. I can find joy in anyone. Well, most everyone. I also have trouble feeling connected with the Japanese Beetles who want to eat stuff in our garden. I can’t go above the second step on the ladder because I tend to fall off. Some of the evil critters get away because I can’t get high enough.

On balance, aging isn’t so bad. I have lived a life of constant stress from trying to be normal when I am not. Now, I get to embrace being weird and getting weirder, and love life. Mostly.

I will know I am really on the right track when I can pray for THEM.

Posted in Aging, Balance Problems, Beetles, Current Activities, Equanimity, Health Issues, Meditation, My Story, Politics, Stories, Writing

Japanese Beetles

Posted on July 28, 2016 by Bill Leave a comment

We are being attacked. When the weather gets hot, Japanese Beetles come out and eat roses, hollyhocks, buckthorn, linden trees, and grape leaves. The poor roses hardly have a chance. The new flowers are ragged by noon. All that is left on some of the grape leaves are the veins. The hollyhocks lose their flowers as well.

Japanese Beetle

It’s war! They are relatively new arrivals here in our neighborhood. They showed up last year and this year they are all over our plants. The evil little beetles come out and eat during the hot weather, lay their eggs in the lawn, the grubs hatch and eat the grass roots. Next spring, the grubs become beetles, and the horrible thing starts all over again.

When they hit the peach and vineyard area around Palisade, the chemicals came out and the infestation was stopped. They don’t talk about the harm done to beneficial insects. We try to be organic, so the poisons are out.

The first tactic we adopted is to go out with a small pitcher with some dish soap laden water, find the bugs, and flick the bugs into the water with a table knife. It goes on all day. The grape arbor is high, and I am banned from going up more than two steps on the ladder, so some escape. I am not big on killing living beings, but here is an exception.

They are fairly round with an iridescent shell. Ugly little beasts. At the end of the day we have dozens floating in the water. With a lot of research, mostly on University Extension Service websites, we discovered neem oil with a tiny amount of azadirachtin kills and repels the little beasts.

As the grubs get active in the turf, we are going to introduce some nematodes that attack the grubs. With luck, we won’t have those dead spots in the lawn. The nematodes stay around, so one time for them.

On my bug hunt one morning, I didn’t find one beetle. The fortified neem oil is working. After a couple of days they are back and it’s back to work. The neighbors won’t be killing the grubs, so we will have an annual battle.

If you have Japanese Beetles, neem oil with azadirachtin works. Straight neem oil works on lots of harmful insects, but not without some azadirachtin for our little buddies. If you need neem oil and don’t have Japanese Beetles, we have a couple of bottles we will give you. Good hunting!

Posted in Beetles, Gardening, My Story, Spring Flowers, Stories

Rocky Flats

Posted on July 27, 2016 by Bill Leave a comment

Rocky Flats

What is now is the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge once was the Rocky Flats Plant where triggers for nuclear weapons were manufactured. The main raw ingredient for the triggers was plutonium, one of the most toxic and radioactive substances known, with a half-life of over 4000 years. During the forty years the plant operated, there were two major fires in glove boxes where plutonium discs were handled. In this and other incidents, many pounds of plutonium were released. The Wikipedia article has an excellent summary and bibliography.

I was talking to a woman recently about Rocky Flats. Her father worked there for several years when the plant was in full operation. He had to deal with a glove box where the plutonium had started to burn. The gloves were so hot he had to wear other gloves before he could put his hands into the glove box gloves to stop the reaction. He probably saved some lives. He died of cancer.

I became more interested in Rocky Flats after reading Full Body Burden, by Kristin Iverson, an English Professor who grew up in the area. The book is controversial, disagreeing with the environmental assessments by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Given all I have read, I am skeptical of the official lint that the area is safe, and exposure to the public was and is minimal. Decide for yourself.

Iverson writes that a large area of contaminated topsoil was covered with more topsoil and pronounced safe. Rocky Flats is aptly named, as millions of tons of glacial erosion products have covered the area with gravel. The surface is called ground armor, mostly rock, as the high winds in the area have blown much of the finer material away. That continues, and rodents burrowing bring buried soil to the surface where it blows into the Denver Metro area..

The nearby Standley Lake, a large irrigation reservoir that provides water to Westminster and Broomfield, allows boating and water skiing but bans swimming because the lake bottom is contaminated with plutonium. Many experts have advocated banning development in the area, but houses are going up.

I got interested again recently because the NOAA National Weather Radar website is my go-to means of weather monitoring. The TV weather people are either warning the apocalypse is imminent or it is fine, no rain, just before a major hailstorm. Over a period of months I noticed a nearly constant radar image indicating precipitation over the NWR. Day or night, weekends or weekdays, the image is there. If it really is rain, the refuge would be a major swamp at the base of the Rocky Mountains.

Many years ago I was a radar repairman in the Army. One of the radars we maintained put out so much radio frequency energy it would kill birds flying in front. We had quite a bit of training about ionizing radiation. Radars emit radiation, so does decaying plutonium. I could not come up with any explanation for the radar image other than radioactive decay. This would be disastrous, as much of the Denver metro area is downwind of Rocky Flats.

I sent a number of emails to the NWS, TV stations, and the CDPHE. I guess I stirred things up a bit, because I got a long, thoughtful letter from CDPHE outlining the investigation I generated. The conclusion reached is that the radar image is from dust coming from a gravel mining and crushing operation just adjacent to the refuge. Here is the letter:

Begin forwarded message:

From: “Spreng, Carl” <carl.spreng@state.co.us>
Date: July 13, 2016 at 3:56:58 PM MDT
To: levanks@me.com
Cc: Phillip Peterson – CDPHE <phillip.peterson@state.co.us>, Surovchak Scott <Scott.Surovchak@lm.doe.gov>, “Moritz, Vera” <Moritz.Vera@epa.gov>, Lindsay Masters – CDPHE <lindsay.masters@state.co.us>, Darr Bob <Bob.Darr@lm.doe.gov>, Rob Beierle – CDPHE <robert.beierle@state.co.us>, Smith Warren <warren.smith@state.co.us>
Subject: Rocky Flats

William Shanks

levanks@me.com

Mr. Shanks,

Your message sent to Phill Peterson in our Radiation Control Program was forwarded to me for response. I discussed your observations with a representative of NOAA. NOAA scientists apparently notice a fairly consistent dust cloud in the Rocky Flats area. This is consistent with the adjacent gravel operations — current and historic. You can observe the dust that rises off these operations as you drive by the site.

During remediation, the source areas of radiological risk in the Central Operable Unit (managed by the US Dept. of Energy) were excavated and shipped out of state. The human health risks inside the Central Operable Unit and the remainder of the site (managed as a refuge by the US Fish and Wildlife Service) were assessed following remediation and risks were found to be very low. A final decision for the site declared that any conceivable use would be appropriate in the Refuge area. That decision was based on an enormous amount of data (surface soil, subsurface soil, groundwater, surface water, air). After the remediation was completed, an aerial survey was conducted using a low-flying helicopter with detectors.

Offsite areas in the vicinity of Rocky Flats are also safe for any use. Numerous offsite surveys confirm the conclusion that only a few samples just east of Rocky Flats detected plutonium concentrations above background levels. You can read more information about the sampling on and around Rocky Flats on the Colorado Dept. of Public Health and Environment’s (CDPHE) web page at: http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/hm/rf/index.htm.

Please contact us again if you have more questions.

Carl Spreng

P 303.692.3358 | F 303.759.5355 | C 303-328-7289

4300 Cherry Creek Drive S, Denver, CO 80246-1530

carl.spreng@state.co.us |

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Carol Leavenworth <levanks@me.com>
Date: Tue, Jul 5, 2016 at 12:39 PM
Subject: Rocky Flats
To: phillip.peterson@state.co.us

Sir,
I notice there is a consistent radar image over the Rocky Flats NWR when viewing the NOAA national weather radar website. I am no physicist, but ionizing radiation is detectable by radar. Is this the case at Rocky Flats? Is there a radiation hazard outside the closed zone? Is there a public health risk for the nearby residential areas?I was a radar repairman in the Army in the 1960’s and remain interested in the field. There weren’t many RF energy safeguards back then and there were nuclear weapons stored where I was stationed in Germany.
Thanks.
William Shanks
2032 S. Logan St.
Denver CO 80210
303-830-0599

After Cleanup

I was skeptical, so I drove out there. I made a couple of circuits around the area, passing through new subdivisions where grading was going on and decided that was not the source. I then turned off SH 93, the road from Golden to Boulder into what used to be the west gate to the bomb plant. I went past lots of no trespassing signs to a big gravel mining and crushing operation. The crusher was producing a significant dust cloud. There were lots of big gravel trucks, indicating a major operation.

I left without getting stopped for trespassing and made another lap around the refuge. The gravel operation is to the southwest of the refuge, and I could see the dust cloud from north of the refuge. Mystery solved. it is not ionizing radiation creating the radar image, it is dust.

There is no radioactive cloud coming off Rocky Flats. There is, however, still a lot of radioactive and chemical pollution out there. I suggest you not buy one of the nice new houses being built in the area..

Posted in Colorado History, Energy Policy, Engineering Failures, Federal Land, Health Issues, Ionizing Radiation, Plutonium, Radar Images, Stories, Wind

What’s Going On?

Posted on July 24, 2016 by Bill Leave a comment

His Yellowness

Here we are in one of the most bizarre presidential campaigns in a land marked by bizarre politics. In many cases, the underlying reason for the periodic upheavals is race. Yankee slavers hauled terrified captives to a strange land where they were put to work on plantations. The plantation-owning Southern aristocracy dominated the agrarian south. Farming in the north was mostly small family farms. Industrial cities grew and a diverse economy grew in contrast to southern agrarianism.

Black people were looked on as inferior and deserved their servitude. The divided country compromised and made a black person worth 3/5th of a white in the Constitution, that standard of democracy. The race problem became the dominant issue in the nineteenth century and remains so today.

The split has always been marked by violence. The tragedy of the Civil War continued after the war with Jim Crow making his mark across the country. Some change came with the great migration of African-Americans from the rural south to the urban north. Race turmoil came with the migration. The civil rights era focused on the south, but the racial divide is as deep in the north as in the north. Race violence seems to be nationwide.

I was stationed in Alabama when I was in the Army in the early 1960s. I was shocked by the segregation. I was more shocked by the segregation in Chicago. The African-Americans moved north to find opportunity. Some found opportunity, but Jim Crow moved north with them. Things are now changing. We have an African-American President who made his home in Chicago. Black people have more opportunity now than at any other time, but it is not enough.

The divides remain. White cops shooting blacks, blacks shooting cops. Rioting comes in cycles, mostly when the weather is hot. Poor people don’t have air conditioning. Much of the hysteria around race violence is fueled by television news. “If it bleeds, it leads”. People watch these relatively isolated incidents and feel it is happening just down the street. Chicago’s south side is something of an aberration; gang violence reinforced by a corrupt police department. After all, we are talking about Cook County with its rich history of corruption and crime.

The black neighborhoods are a different place. Being stopped for driving while black is no joke. It is a means of race-based repression. The lynchings have not really stopped; the racist bully cops who are a small part of every police department have assumed the role. No longer is it a rope, it’s a nine millimeter handgun in the hands of a rogue police officer.

All this brings me to the Republicans. Our national economy is changing. Many working class people are politically conservative, wanting more stability in a changing economy that is leaving them behind. Good paying industrial jobs are drying up.

A good example is here in Denver. Gates Rubber is gone, the production moved out of the country. The former Gates factory which used to dominate South Denver is being replaced with expensive apartment complexes. Today, the jobs are in offices and restaurants. The office people move into the apartments, the poorly paid workers move to decaying suburbs or cram themselves into tiny apartments on Capitol Hill.

There is one growing industry here, marijuana. Jobs are being created and rents for warehouses for grow operations are going up. The warehouses were built for thriving small businesses doing light manufacturing and supporting the construction industry. The Great Recession created by our friends who run things from lower Manhattan killed many of those small businesses. The working class lost out again.

The white working class is angry. Many of the jobs are gone, the opportunity for small businesses has shrunk, and immigrants seem to be taking the jobs at the bottom. Until this year, the Republican Party has failed to capitalize on this growing disaffection. The party’s emphasis has been to enrich the wealthy, ignore the poor, take their safety nets away, and keep the minimum wage at poverty level. Uh, oh, here comes Mr. Trump. It is hard to tell what he really believes, but his rhetoric has focused on returning to some past that was better for those angry people than the present. He mocks the liberal ideals of social progress and seems to advocate a return to a dominant, imperialistic America returning to the industrial prosperity of post-World War II America when white people were firmly in control. He also wants to remove all constraints on free-wheeling development without regard to social or environmental consequences. More jobs.

His own record doesn’t support his rhetoric, but the discontent he is exploiting overrules his inconsistencies. Democrats want a well-regulated welfare state, and Republicans want to make rich people richer. Disaffected workers are turning to a man who advocates strength, control, and more jobs by rebuilding the industrial economy that has moved to China. No more free trade, the USA will regain former worker’s prosperity with protectionism.

The rich will get richer, but the workers will regain what was lost in the shift to a global economy. Trump and Putin will share the spoils of the new nationalism. Europe can muddle along, but the rest of the world is there to be shared by the U.S. and Russia.

The voting bloc Trump tapped into was enough to get him nominated, but he will probably lose to Ms. Clinton. Her problem is much the same as the old Republicans. She is a reformer who has always worked for those at the margins, however working class economic problems persist. Those problems created the Trump phenomenon, and solutions are hard to come by. The Obamas promote college for everyone, but who is going to do the work? There needs to be some way to build a good life for the workers. How? This is the twenty first century dilemma.

Posted in Apocalyptic Prophesies, Fear, Politics, Race, Stories, Trump

Those Damn Cars

Posted on July 18, 2016 by Bill Leave a comment

Tacoma. Mine has lots of brush scrapes on the sides.

Living in the USA almost always means having cars. It is possible to do without, but difficult except in New York, Boston, and San Francisco. I was eighteen when I got my first car, a 1957 Ford. I have lost count of how many since 1961. I have had sedans, a panel truck, 2wd pickups, 4×4 pickups, SUV’s, and sports cars. I have also crashed a few. It’s a combination of ADD and poor eye-hand coordination responsible for the crashes. I was even in one crash that wasn’t my fault.

My favorites? Pickups and sports cars, sort of on opposite ends of the automotive spectrum. I learned how to drive in a pickup, and their versatility appeals to me. Lately, the pickups have been four wheel drive so I can risk my life on really bad mountain and desert roads. Currently my four wheeler is a Toyota Tacoma. It is just went in to get its rear springs replaced. That is the third recall.

Matrix

Carol’s car is a Toyota Matrix, sort of a mini SUV. It has had recalls as well, those Takata airbags that throw shrapnel. I still like Toyotas. They are reliable and are for the most part well thought out. We have friends with Priuses, but I am still not sure.

We have another resident in the garage. It is a 2006 BMW 325i four door sedan. Don’t be fooled, the thing is a sports car with four doors. Power, handling, looks, and some snobbery.

That thing is fun. I turn corners without slowing down. It just turns, no squeal, no big deal. The steering varies with speed. At slow speeds, it hardly takes any turns to corner. At higher speeds, you have to give the steering wheel more input.

BMW 325i

The BMW is fast. I don’t have any comparison with, say, a Mustang, but it goes when you mash down. To me, it has just enough power. Passing those RV’s in the mountains is no problem at all. Speeding up or slowing down to change lanes, zip. I have never spun the tires to show off.

It is helpless in the snow. It has traction control, but no help. The tires are wide, the car is low, and it just sits there and spins those rear wheels. The BMW’s with an X in their model name have all wheel drive. Carol’s daughter didn’t need AWD in Silicon Valley, where she bought the car.

The thing is automated. Everything is programmable, even the rear view mirrors. There are buttons everywhere and a digital interface controlled by a knob you turn to scroll through options. I think I can operate about ten percent of the stuff. I keep telling myself to get out there with the owners manual and learn, but I haven’t done it in seven months.

BMW’s cost too much, they are expensive to fix, not very roomy, and so much fun to drive. We don’t need three cars. We could probably be fine with one. I don’t know what we are going to do. we will probably sell the Matrix and the BMW and get Carol a cool AWD car.

Posted in Cars, Current Activities, Family History, Money, My Story, Stories

Dirty Denver

Posted on June 23, 2016 by Bill Leave a comment

Windstorm

The wind blows here in Denver, and it is not all air. Those mountains just west of us are wearing down. Most of the sand and dirt ends up in the rivers, put the wind blows some of the mountains away. If you park your car outside, you already know this. The dust covers everything on the car, and you have to wash the damn thing. Mostly the dust is that tan/brown dirt color, but sometimes it is red when parts of Utah decide to take a visit.

The constant deposition of wind-blown dirt is why ancient cities get buried. The process is slow, but relentless. Denver is being buried, but we haul a lot of it away. Our older house has what seems to be sunken sidewalks. It is the wind- blown dust combined with organic matter (grass clippings) to form topsoil.

Carol likes to say that a lot of the stuff that accumulates is spider legs. True, along with the exoskeletons of millions of insects. In geologic terms the rate of deposition of all that stuff is fairly rapid.

Here on Colorado’s Front Range we get wind, but nothing like the mountain winds, unless you live in Boulder or other places at the foot of the mountains. The mountains are high enough to get some of the higher altitude winds that the flatlands don’t get much of. Also, when a weather system blows in, the mountains act as a barrier, forcing all that moving air up. As it rises, it cools, gets more dense, and descends on the lee side of the mountains. As it falls, it gains velocity and tends to warm up, creating our famous chinook winds.

Loess Soil
Windblown Dirt

As the wind moves on the plains, it’s velocity decreases and some of the dirt it carries falls out. Close to the mountains, a lot of it is sand. That explains the sand hills we have close to the mountains. You can identify the sand because it does not support plant growth as well as soil. Sandy areas are cow country, no farming. A little farther east, the dirt falls down. A lot of dirt falls down, forming loess, a German term for wind-blown dirt deposits. Eastern Colorado has thousands of square miles of loess. Without irrigation, it is usually planted in wheat.

Of course, all the water or wind-borne sediment is headed for Mississippi, Lousiana, or the gulf. Most of that Mississippi mud will end up as shale. At some point plate tectonics will shove it up as dry land and the cycle starts over. Most of the sand will eventually end up in the streams, get buried, and form sandstone like the Dakota sandstone dinosaur fossils are found in. In other places, tremendous deposits of wind blown sand accumulate, eventually forming the sandstone that blankets the Colorado Plateau.

That dirt accumulating in your lawn and garden is part of a recycling process going on all over our planet for millions of years. The process will continue long after we are all gone, as long as there is air and water on the planet. To me, the whole thing is a miracle, all these geologic processes creating conditions existing long enough for the evolutionary mistake known as humanity to develop.

Posted in Stories, Weather, Wind

Shaking and Baking

Posted on June 23, 2016 by Bill Leave a comment

As you are aware if you are a regular reader of my ravings, I am a geology buff. I like the Big Picture, mid-ocean rifts and rises, tectonic plates shoving one another around, places where the hot insides spout out of the ground, mountains rising and being worn away, and the oceans becoming ever more salty. Most of the time, all this is a slow process, but sometimes all hell breaks loose.

San Andreas Fault

Just look at that photo of the San Andreas Fault. Things are clearly on the move and the land is being torn apart. The Pacific Plate is sliding northward along the North American Plate. Pasadena will one day be next to Anchorage. Don’t wait up for it, though. The Pacific coast of North America is one of the most seismically active regions on the Ring of Fire surrounding the Pacific Ocean. It shakes, it blows, it smokes, it flows.

Places like that make nice places to live. Most of the time. There is the ocean, lots of pretty landscapes with beautiful mountains nearby, and places to grow things. Just look at the Seattle-Tacoma area. Bays, inlets, rivers, islands, and a big old mountain to look at. It is easy to forget that mountain is a large volcano just biding it’s time until it lets loose again.

Mount Rainier. Close to Town

If Rainier resembles Mt. St. Helens in the way it erupts, there might be some warning. What we won’t know is how big, exactly when, and for how long. There is a lot going on in that area. Boeing, Microsoft, REI, millions of people, and Starbucks are a few examples. If a swarm of magnitude four earthquakes begin, what to do? Shut everything down and evacuate? Where will everyone go? What about looting and plundering? What if it doesn’t erupt for months, if ever?

Pyroclastic flows of very hot, wet, chunky stuff have flowed off that mountain all the way to the ocean. The old cliche says “It is not if, but when.” We just do not know when. So, life along the Pacific Rim is always something of a gamble. I have felt small earthquakes and looked into the crater of a Volcano in Costa Rica, a lovely, green, paradise. Earthquakes destroy roads and railroads, volcanos bury villages, and life goes on.

Irazu, Costa Rica

Small, poor Costa Rica is one thing, the Seattle-Tacoma area, or Los Angeles, or Portland, or Eugene, or San Francisco are entirely different matters. No amount of preparation can take into account all the things which might happen. Prediction is in its infancy. Mt. St. Helens in hindsight gave lots of warning, but the disaster was huge in a relatively isolated area. When Rainier or Mt. Hood let go the disaster will be in a heavily populated area with just a few ways out.

Currently there are lots of earthquakes in the oil field regions of Texas, Oklahoma, and surrounding areas. I wouldn’t worry too much if I lived there, the odds of a Big One are fairly small. St. Louis and Salt Lake are at more risk. The West Coast is the big danger zone. The earth will keep moving, the plates will continue to slide. Eruptions and quakes will continue to happen. My solution? Don’t live there. What is your plan?

Posted in Apocalyptic Prophesies, Cliches, Earthquakes, Environment, Fear, Mt. St. Helens, Stories, Volcanos

More on Discontent

Posted on June 22, 2016 by Bill Leave a comment

The Age of Steam

Our economy has been one of change since the beginning. When the railroads came to Colorado in 1870, a lot of teamster jobs hauling freight from Omaha and Kansas City went away. The automobile would not have happened without the new petroleum industry. Coal retained its strength from powering locomotives, heating homes, and fueling industry. Industry and manufacturing grew, making the American economy one of the largest in the world.

What a combination, land, natural resources, transportation, a growing population of people with ambition, mobility, and a willingness to try something new. Some were left behind. Native Americans, African Americans, and those new citizens in the Southwest who were once part of Mexico with its traditional ways. As always, immigrants ended up at the bottom because of language and discrimination.

There were troubles. Low wages, a turbulent labor history, drought, an unstable business cycle creating panics individuals were helpless to influence. There were some adventures the government engaged in, such as Cuba, the Philippines China, Japan, all the trappings of empire. In many ways the American West was an empire, won at the expense of those who were living there.

John Deere

Agriculture was becoming more mechanized, displacing people who moved to the cities to work in industry. All the change continues. There is a tremendous amount of wealth in Silicon Valley, not so much in Michigan.

The West has been boom-bust from the start. The fur trade collapsed, but the gold rushes started. The government started giving land to the railroads and individuals. The short grass prairie boomed with hopeful wheat growers, then the droughts came. Oil and gas grew and grew, and grew. As old fields played out, new oil fields were discovered. A couple of big wars really heated things up.

It all looked great. Yes, lots of change, but people could find good jobs and things steamed along. The real upheavals were when the business cycle threw millions out of work. The 1930’s were a terrible time, but a war healed all that.

The West That Never Existed

The 1950’s seemed like a golden age. Lots of jobs, the U.S. Ruled much of the world, and television built a myth of stability, prosperity, and a bright future for everyone. the myth came from relative prosperity and the ubitiquous westerns on television promoting a life that never existed.

The 1960’s brought social upheaval accompanied by a growing shift in how people made their living. Steel mills closed, imported cars were on the roads, and computer-driven automation started taking industrial jobs. The word Yuppie became a term of derision, but the Yuppies were the wave of the future. They possessed education and a skill set many people could or would not obtain.

The skilled trades fell out of favor. It is college or else. The trade jobs are filled the way they have always been filled, by immigrants. This time however, the immigrants are not easily assimilated Europeans. They are Latin, and and bring their culture with them. Many are just not as interested in assimilating, and many are undocumented.

All this change leaves a huge segment of our society out of the good life. Many are rural, where big mechanized farms haven taken jobs. Many just do not have social and intellectual requirements to move into the new economy. What’s left? Low-paying service economy jobs, often for an out of date minimum wage inadequate for one person, let alone a family. It is hard to build a life mowing lawns and doing kitchen work. Much of the time jobs that used to be stepping stones have turned into dead ends.

The trouble is just beginning. Those people marginalized by an economy where they don’t fit can be radicalized and turn to violence and terror or Donald Trump, which may be same thing. The discontent is just not with the marginalized working class. There are lots of well-educated people from middle class families making pizzas and living in their parents’ basement. They thought they were doing the right thing going into debt to get an education and found nobody wants them.

This is still a rich country. There is a huge imbalance in the distribution of wealth which has to change. The change agent must be government. A true progressive tax structure and an end to the massive influence of special interests in government are desperately needed. The nation has the resources to provide everyone with an income providing them some dignity and the flexibility to enhance their station in life. Given a decent income, most will seek ways to do even better.

We will always have the wealthy and the poor. Now, there is too much concentrated wealth for a few and too many poor. Trying to revert to an American utopia which never existed will only add to social instability.

Happy Days Are Here Again

There should be no food banks or coat drives. There should be no one sleeping on the streets. People with mental health problems should not be cast out. Everyone should have the time and resources available to build better lives for themselves rather than being trapped in poverty.

In other words, we need a new time of progressive change, not an attempt to return to a myth. How to pay for it all? A realistic progressive tax system to redistribute income.

Posted in Coal, Colorado History, Economics, Energy Policy, History, Money, Myths, Oil and Gas Policy, Polarization, Politics, Small Towns, Stories

The Summer Of Our Discontent

Posted on June 17, 2016 by Bill Leave a comment

What a time! It’s hot about two weeks early for this area. I got a replacement toolbox for my Toyota Tacoma’s toolbox. The old one failed because I haul so much stuff around. Fortunately it had a lifetime guarantee. We seem to be spending entirely too much time in doctor’s offices; me getting pre-cancerous patches frozen on my head, Carol with eye trouble, and her son with a broken wrist and atrial fibrillation.

On the positive side, our garden is looking great, no hail this year so far. We are going to have a big raspberry crop, the flowers are beautiful, and all the veggies are growing away. Things seem to be going fairly well for an old couple.

There is tragedy in the land. Murdering large groups of innocent people just trying to have a good time is terrible. There has to be some means in place to restrict weapons solely designed for killing large numbers of people.

The reason I am writing this, however, is about the current political situation. The U.S. Has a long tradition of sending poorly qualified people to the White House, but this is getting ridiculous. This guy the Republicans have chosen to run has managed to combine all the worst qualities of American politicians in one outrageous package. The man has no qualifications to lead the nation in any direction other than backward, and possibly into chaos. Just his hair should be a cue. What are those people thinking?

I understand the discontent. A lot of people are not liberal and want leadership addressing their problems. Stagnant wages, a lack of good skilled industrial jobs, and rapid change rather than a safe, stable, comfortable life like Ward, June, Wally, and the Beav lived. They forget that the Cleavers didn’t exist, they were just a TV show.

They sit in front of the TV watching pretty people having a crisis which always has a happy ending. Their lives aren’t so happy, and they are angry about it. So here comes a TV show host who says he can fix everything. He will get rid of “those people”, give them good jobs, make the country safe, and put steak on the plate and a nice diesel Super Duty pickup in every driveway. If there is trouble, the Marines can stop it. The country will regress or else.

The mainstream Republican approach is to make rich people richer, take away benefits, and cut schools, highways, parks, sell the government land off. and send their sons off to endless wars. Congress is paralyzed. That plan has run its course. The only reason it worked at all is the rich ones spent lots of money fooling people and buying politicians.

The result is Donald Trump. He says he can fix it. Well, no. The man seems to have no idea how our government works. He thinks he can issue commands on impulse and get an immediate response, whether his commands are legal or not. The only things he really wants are adulation and a chance to get rid of those who ask the wrong questions.

Hillary has done a lot of things well, but she has a past. Trump will sling as much dirt as he can, hoping enough will stick to her to get him elected. It worked with the primaries, let’s hope it won’t work for the Big One.

Posted in Current Activities, Fear, Polarization, Politics, Stories, Terrorism

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